Retro Gonzo

President’s Bush’s approval rating hovered steadily around a stellar 35% this morning, reflecting the lowest faith in an American leader since Richard Nixon’s end of term 24% rating, the lowest in recorded history. As the American people and their representatives on both sides of the aisle begin to voice mutual disdain for our highest authority, it’s worth taking a look back at Tricky Dick and his own fall from grace.
Writing to his editor in February, 1972, three months before the Watergate break-in and nine month prior to the biggest landslide victory in history, Hunter S. Thompson eerily captures the bizarre and surreal nature of a campaign that would become known for its seminal role in the culture of corruption, scandal, and misrepresentation that has become synonymous with American politics:

“At first I thought it was me; that I was missing all the action because I wasn’t p lugged in. but then I began reading the press wizards who are plugged in, and it didn’t take long to figure out that most of them were just filling space because their contracts said they had to write a certain amount of words every week…But they all seemed very depressed; not only about the ’72 election, but about the whole long-term future of politics and democracy in America.”

The disillusionment he speaks of rings all too clearly in the minds of pundits and citizens alike in the current political arena – one where more citizens voted against the president than for him and where the spoon-fed press corps ask scripted questions and remain to content to report from a professional distance. While the critics of this president have made themselves heard, the hamstrings of mainstream journalism have become increasingly apparent, as they were becoming to Hunter Thompson in 1972. Frustrated by the “Boys on the Bus,” as Timothy Crouse would later dub the crew of reporters assigned to the campaign, Thompson bemoans what he saw as the current mode of journalism; “ sucking up the news and then spewing it out by the ‘Five W’s’ in a package that makes perfect sense.” In hindsight, his beef becomes even more legitimate.

Perhaps the most slanderous campaign in U.S. political history, the run up the ’72 election saw Nixon’s staff revert to the political equivalent of guerilla warfare, with tactics ranging from public slander via fabricated letters to personal attacks on opponents to high school pranks including the ordering of take-out under the opposition’s name. Yet nearly all of these tactics went unreported by the mainstream media outlets, and the Nixon administration won an unprecedented 60% of the popular vote in November of 1972.
When the Watergate scandal broke in 1974, the Nixon administration fell like a house of cards, crucified by the public. But until then the media had remained content to recite instead of report, to placate instead of investigate. Hunter S. Thompson remained a glaring example; his work far from acceptable in the traditional journalistic tradition. He was personal, political, and biased. He was both loved and hated, responding to each sentiment with vigor and spunk. Despite personal opinions, what remains is a striking example of a journalist who was able not just to report the news, but to report on the news.
Despite his penchant for blunt statements, vulgar language, and drug use, what Thompson’s writing conveys is a sense of place both physical and chronological; an anchoring of historic events in the permanently relevant substance of personalities and human interactions. Lifting the veil of American politics, he dared to say what he saw in his own terms, focusing on candidates as much as issues, practice as much as results. His letters, here and elsewhere, mix cynic humor and astute observation with a rambling intensity that connotes both extreme frustration and an ardent sense of urgency.
His tone is one that seems hard to find today. For several reasons, it seems unlikely that the current administration, and perhaps any administration today, would give a journalist like Thompson the chance to get anywhere near as close to the candidates as he did. But his is the type of journalism that we may need the most as we look toward the 2008 Presidential election and beyond. Americans are faced today with a bevy of institutionally imbedded problems constantly being reinforced by the ever-wider reach of a contemporary media that finds itself intertwined with (and increasingly beholden to) big business. Mass media conglomerates and lumbering PR firms dominate what has become the business of information, and the window of opportunity for independent journalism to reach the populace is closing fast. It is Thompson’s blunt, fast combination of realism, punditry, and disdain for spin that Americans must rely upon if we are ever to organize a honest grassroots movement for political change.